New wine to feature image of Cape Sable Light

The winery chose a photograph, that they found on the Shelburne Coast Guard’s website, to be on the label.

Kathy Johnson photo

By Amy Woolvett

A Shelburne County icon will grace the label of a South Shore vineyard’s newest bottle of red wine.

Petite Riviere Vineyards, noted for its red wines, had been on a search to find a perfect sister red wine to its popular white wine Fog Bank.

As a part of that search, they chose the Cape Sable Lighthouse to be featured on all of their bottles of the new wine, aptly entitled Sable.

“We are sailors and have an affinity to the Cape Sable light,” said owner of the Petite Riviere Vineyards, Sean Sears.

They chose a photograph, found on the Shelburne Coast Guard’s website, taken by local photographer Kathy Johnson to be on the label.

Johnson said she was happy with their decision to feature the local lighthouse.

“It’s a south shore wine with a south shore icon,” she said.

To celebrate the decision, the vineyard recently sent two cases of the wine to a fundraising event for the maintenance and painting of the lighthouse.

Sears announced last week that for every bottle sold, $1 would also be donated to the fund to refurbish the lighthouse.

A community-based effort has been working hard to raise $130,000 for three coats of paint for the 101-foot lighthouse.

Both the paint and the exterior concrete is in bad need of repair and fundraising efforts have been in full swing throughout the year.

Built in 1923/24, the Cape Light is the tallest lighthouse in Nova Scotia. Located on the Cape Ledge, a small island off the Hawk on Cape Sable Island, the eight-sided icon has been in need of a paint job for over a decade.

The federal government declared lighthouses in the province surplus property in 2010 and became the responsibility of community groups like the one in Clark’s Harbour.

“With every bottle people can support directly the lighthouse and drink a great wine at the same time,” said Sears.

The wine Sable, like some of the vineyard’s brands, will not be available in liquor stores but it will be offered at restaurants across Nova Scotia as well as farmer’s markets with an expected price of $21.99.

The deep purple-red colour of the new wine holds a bouquet of black currant, blackberry, sweet spice and black tea.